DISQUS

Voices.com CEO · 2 years ago

Given time and the right tools, most small business owns with a marketing mindset can accomplish what MerchantCircle is offering.

Track what people are saying about you? Please. Try setting up a Google Alert or a Watchlist in Technorati.

If you're a small business owner, and aren't running Google Analytics on your site, you're simply throwing money away. Successful Internet Marketing is simply about measuring ROI.

I say this, because as CEO, I receive at least 5 cold-calls from these types of organization each week.

Sure it may be working for the small business owner who hasn't updated their website in the past 5 years, but for those who live on the Web each day, please don't lecture me on the importance of have an Internet Marketing strategy.

Vent over.

Mike Polaski · 2 years ago

ReachLocal and others like it makes sense if they want more advertisers and/or SEM expertise (not to mention more employees).

If, however, they wanted more technology, OpenList would have been a great aqcuisition for them (they aggregate reviews from other sites). However, Marchex already bought them and is using them to power their 200,000+ local domains.

Another good alternative is upstart YellowBot which also aggregates reviews.

Having these technologies would help them get/find more reviews which may mean more advertisers (which appears to be their business model).

Don Thorson · 2 years ago

Nice story Matt. Good job describing the landscape. As a marketing person who has spent time trying to help smaller businesses figure out how to use the web, I can attest to the need for these types of solutions. Congratulations to MerchantCircle on their investment. I wish them well.

mathew johnson · 2 years ago

They should use some of their credit line to acquire Localmarketers - a small Seattle co that took ~$600K from Madrona

Business Financing Guru · 1 year ago

Thanks, Matt, good info here. There's also some good small business tools worth mentioning here: http://www.wbsonline.com.

Kevin L. · 1 year ago

MerchantCircle recently crossed 500,000 members. We’re proud to help local businesses acquire customers by offering an alternative to over-priced, ineffective offline marketing channels. We’ve been interviewing our merchants in all 50 states – you can read about their MerchantCircle experience here: www.visualcv.com/merchantcircle.

We’re committed to providing every local business a web presence, easy-to-use marekting tools and a platform for connecting with other merchants, all for free. As always, please email any questions or concerns to support@merchantcircle.com and we will respond as soon as possible.